The Writer's Strike is Over. Now What?

The Writer's strike between the Writer's Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television producers, which began in November, has finally come to an end. After 12 weeks, both sides finalized a three-year-contract that the WGA leaders presented to the writers in L.A. and New York on February 9, 2008.

What caused the 10,500 striking film and TV writers to go on strike was money, but it's not what you might think. Contrary to what many people think, writers do not make a lot of money. In fact, most writers are classified as "middle class." The dispute between the writers and the studios was over royalties from DVD and Internet sales.

The effects of the strike

"The strike has had a very negative impact on the ratings. Other than Fox, which was lifted by the record high performance for the recent Super Bowl, each network is down by double-digit percents across the board from one year earlier and it is only likely to get worse in the near future," said Media Week ratings analysis Marc Berman via e-mail.

According to Chron.com, viewer ship on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox was down about nine percent during the first month of the year. Nielsen Media Research also showed that ABC, CBS nor NBC were able to average about seven million viewers during the week of the Super Bowl.

Even though the strike is over, the bad news will still be coming for several writers who will most likely be getting their pink slips because certain series are going to be canceled. Re-launching the new series, which most people have already forgotten about, will be too expensive for the networks to re-launch; not to mention the show's ratings were most likely low.

Since the networks don't want to extend their shows past May, many of the series will not return until the fall, which means more reality TV. Sorry folks. It could take anywhere between "four to six" weeks to air a new post-strike episode, according to the newspaper the San Francisco Gate.